I can barely recall a time in my life when Seventh Son wasn't just about to come out. I can find articles and interviews relating to the film going all the way back to late 2011 and Legendary Pictures made a Comic Con appearance to celebrate pre-production that same year. And yet here we are, at last, finally seeing the final theatrical cut of this much-delayed fantasy adventure. The film of course comes courtesy of Legendary Pictures and Thunder Road Films, with Universal/
Comcast Corp. handling distribution duties. And now that the film finally arrives, it has to face the burden of being the second-most interesting among big-budget fantasy films delayed from their original release dates opening this Friday, behind Warner Bros./
Time Warner Inc.' Jupiter Ascending. Some movies just can't catch a break.

The film cost around $95 million all-told, which means it has to make quite a bit of bank in order to recover from what will likely be a rather poor domestic showing. The good news is that the film already opened overseas in late December, and the picture has already earned $82 million overseas as of Sunday, including $27m in China (China Film Group is among the investors) and $15.5m in Russia. Now an $82m overseas gross, especially when you factor in that some US productions get as little as 25% of the ticket sales sent back to the studios, is a long way to go towards breaking even. But it will be interesting to watch the film's foreign box office compared to the (likely) anemic domestic take. Also of note is the film's IMAX release, which finds itself as (in my opinion) the lesser half of a rare double-bill, as both this and Jupiter Ascending got delayed all the way to this same February slot with agreed-upon IMAX exhibition deals in place. Otherwise, this film will likely be but a trivia question in terms of its delays.

The Review:

When I was a younger man, I was indeed the sort to gather friends together to go see a movie that I knew would be terrible purely for the unintentional entertainment value. I saw the likes of Battlefield Earth in theaters because it was terrible and we watched films like The Wicker Man (the remake) on Blu Ray precisely because of the would-be humor value. I'm not exactly proud of that, and I fume on the inside when I see an entire culture raised on Mystery Science Theater 3000 racing off to see RiffTrax versions of genuinely good movies like Starship Troopers or treating a perfectly sincere television mediocrity like The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story as the worst thing ever made. But for better or worse, Seventh Son is precisely the kind of misbegotten disaster that seems made for late-night heckling. It is not remotely boring, and it features two hilariously over-the-top performances from two highly respected actors. It is likely to be one of the worst films of the year, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy myself. Yes, Seventh Son is that kind of movie.

The plot concerns young Tom Ward (Ben Barnes) who, because he is the seventh son of a seventh son, is recruited by a witch hunter (Jeff Bridges) to become an apprentice and hunt down a witch queen known as Malkin (Julianne Moore) before she does the whole "cover the lands with darkness" bit in just a week's time. This leads to all manner of adventures, from fights with bears, and romance with a morally-divided young with (Alicia Vikander), to a final battle with the diabolical Mother Malkin. Djimon Hounsou pops up as a lead henchman of sorts while Olivia Williams has a thankless role as young Tom's mother who has what turns out to be a pretty irrelevant secret.

Julianne Moore goes as over the top as she can get away with, but she is clearly relishing the chance to play a fantasy villain, and the film is more entertaining when she is onscreen. But Jeff Bridges seems to be intentionally attempting to give one of the worst leading turns in modern cinematic history. He looks miserable and he sounds like a heavily intoxicated version of his R.I.P.D. character to no good purpose. As someone who championed Bridges in the days of Fearless and The Fisher King as a painfully underrated actor, we have now come to the point where his appearance in a fantasy film is a genuine red flag.

This is the kind of film where the love interest has exactly enough sword fighting beats to put in a trailer and on the poster before she is saved in battle by the boy and where Williams gets exactly one moment of being interesting, again I presume for the benefit of the trailer editors. It's the kind of movie where all of the villains are ethnic minorities and women and where only an otherwise untested white kid can save the world because he is "the Special." This is the kind of film where the hero's inability to straight-up murder a captured prisoner is considered a character flaw that must be remedied. I could argue that this is yet another in a series of popular entertainments that play on the notion that the Salem witch burners were onto something after all, but anyone who takes this film as anything but a lark has only themselves to blame.

That the story is strictly by-the-numbers isn't necessarily a flaw, as formulas are formulas for a reason, but the film offers a choice of genuinely boring characters and painfully over-the-top characters with little in-between. The production values are fine, I suppose, but the needless 3D muddies the effort. This is the rare film that I would tell you not to see in IMAX, as it's not worth what I consider to be a subpar 3D conversion. It's no secret that the film has been delayed for a while and, fair or not, this feels like a 3D conversion from the dark days of 2010 and 2011. The film has a few decent action beats, and the climax does contain at least one beat involving dragons that falls into "never seen that before" category.

There are countless unintentional laughs, many of which come from Bridges's insane lead performance and some that come from the film's oddly endearing (but not remotely convincing) CGI creature work. Bridges's turn falls into the category of Chris Klein's nutso supporting turn in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li where it might be awful acting or it may be a kind of meta-parody. There are a few some awkward moments arising from the fact that the word "spook" means something very different in American slang than it does in Europe where the film's source novel (The Spook's Apprentice) originated. I get regional dialect and all, but there is a reason characters in American movies don't use that British slang for cigarette that, in the US, doubles as an anti-gay slur and there is a reason that we don't still use Agatha Christie's original title for And Then There Were None (you can look that one up yourself).

Seventh Son is a very bad film, and unless you are the sort that intentionally seeks out bad films in a theatrical environment I would warn you to say far, far away. But if you are that sort, or if you feel like indulging in its weirdly entertaining badness when the film comes to DVD or VOD, I wouldn't hold it against you. In an age of seemingly intentional mediocrity like Sharknado 2 or any number of knowingly trashy reality shows that basically bait their audiences to hate-tweet as a way to garner publicity and viewers, there is almost something innocent about a major film as unintentionally misshapen as Seventh Son. It's a bad film to be sure, but there is a sincerity to its awfulness and I cannot work up the energy to be angry about it.